Exploiting tidal asteroseismology in binary populations from combined space photometry and time-resolved high-resolution spectroscopy

TL;DR

This paper discusses leveraging combined space photometry and high-resolution spectroscopy to study pulsating stars in binary systems, aiming to improve models of stellar and binary evolution through large-scale population analysis.

Contribution

It highlights the potential of phase-resolved, high-resolution spectroscopy for constraining stellar properties in binary pulsators and advocates for a dedicated multi-fibre spectrograph to enable population-level studies.

Findings

Space photometry has increased binary pulsator detections by over four orders of magnitude.

High-resolution spectroscopy can provide model-independent stellar constraints.

A dedicated spectrograph could resolve pulsations and orbital motions efficiently.

Abstract

Space-based photometry has substantially increased the number of pulsating stars found in binary systems by more than four orders of magnitude. Combined with high-resolution spectroscopy, high-precision photometry offers model-independent constraints on stellar parameters and internal processes. The advent of space-based photometric surveys has given us access to populations of tidally perturbed pulsators, which offer a unique and demanding set of constraints on tidal physics and stellar interiors. However, we lack the ability to undertake multi-epoch, high-resolution spectroscopy at large scale. The ability to obtain phase-resolved, high-resolution spectra would allow us to place precise, model-independent constraints on the stellar properties of pulsators in binary systems that will truly test our close binary asteroseismic modelling techniques, leading to much-needed constraints on fundamental stellar and binary physics. The need to properly cover the large parameter-space of binary stars demands a large-scale, population-level analysis in order to understand the complex landscape of binary stellar evolution. To enable this population-level analysis, we need a dedicated multi-fibre spectrograph (30--200 fibres) with high spectral resolution ($R\geq 50000$), high signal-to-noise ratio ($\mathrm{S/N\geq 300}$), and a limiting magnitude of approximately 15. Such a spectrograph would be capable of efficiently resolving the pulsation variability on the order of minutes and orbit motion on the order of days to years for many targets.